Registration is required to attend this event.

Update: This event has been cancelled and will be rescheduled

Imagine What If….
…there was still a cannery in Southwest Harbor or Bass Harbor?
…there was a giant tea house and horse center on Eagle Lake?
…we don’t take action on climate change?

The Mount Desert Island Historical Society has been exploring these topics and more, connecting history to the island’s physical and cultural landscape today. Join Raney Bench, Executive Director for the Society, to imagine what life might be like on the island if different decisions were made in the past.

The Library will also display “We Change With Them,” a six-image series by Jennifer Steen Booher, exploring shifting ecosystem dynamics resulting from climate change in the Gulf of Maine. It is part of the Landscape of Change project, MDIHS’ joint initiative with Acadia National Park, Schoodic Institute, the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, College of the Atlantic, and A Climate to Thrive, and was published in Chebacco XXIII: Imagining What If… in spring 2022. The images layer cyanotype, drawings, and data to tell the story of climate-related phenomena on Mount Desert Island, Maine. The project title refers to a sixteenth-century English proverb, “Omnia mutantur nos et mutamur in illis” (All things change and we change with them).

Raney Bench is a resident of Southwest Harbor and has worked as a curator for the Abbe Museum, as Executive Director for the Seal Cove Auto Museum, and is the current Executive Director for the Mount Desert Island Historical Society. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Native American History, a Master’s in Museum Studies, and has spent her career working in small museums focused on making local history interesting and relevant.